It's a Race!
by Kakawot
Summary: The Doctor and Rose raced as if their lives depended on it. Which, for once, it didn't.


**A/N: **A random bit of misleading fun. I'm ESL, so please notify me if you come across anything weird.

Enjoy!

* * *

Rose's eyebrows hung somewhere along her hairline, while the Doctor's wriggled like epileptic caterpillars.

"Reckon you can handle it?" asked Rose skeptically. The Doctor wriggled some more, bodily this time.

"My dear Rose, I am _the_ _Doctor_."

"Exactly," said Rose, and took off as the light turned green.

"Oi! What d'you mean by that?" the Doctor called, but she was too focused on the road in front of her to answer. The Doctor floored it and felt his seat vibrate as the speedometer jumped towards impossibly fast speeds. He stuck his tongue out as he focused single-mindedly on the curving and twisting road.

"C'mon, power!" hollered Rose and the Doctor saw her trying to push the pedal through the metal floor. It creaked ominously. The car she drove responded by gaining another inch on him, so he also made the floorboards creak.

He threw the steering wheel violently around as they neared a hairpin bend and he nearly vibrated out of the seat as the car drifted neatly around the corner.

"Ha, saw _that_?" he called out, but Rose didn't answer. Her car already bore down on the next hairpin bend, and the Doctor mentally calculated the apex of the corner. At exactly the right moment he braked, twirled the steering wheel with one hand and kept one on the gear lever, ready to gain that extra momentum through shifting back and making the engine scream.

"Not bad for someone who barely knows how to fly his spaceship!" teased Rose. The Doctor narrowly missed scraping the guardrail as he retorted.

"Ha, you piloted it _once_ and I had to save you from a brain implosion! Or explosion." The Doctor steered around a tricky bend before he concluded: "Imexplosion."

"You're the one who parked it two inches from a sea container and couldn't get out," said Rose.

"I thought you hadn't noticed that," muttered the Doctor. The nose of his car hugged Rose's backend but she pulled away inch by inch. The Doctor regretted choosing this car. But the blue color was nice, so he took the shoddy handling and severe lack of grip in stride.

The two quieted down as the race heated up. They gave it their all, with Rose still in the lead. She refused to give up her head start advantage and swerved left and right to keep the Doctor from passing on the straight bits. The canyon they raced in was a mass of brown and grey, the road varying from asphalt as black as a Dalek's heart to the roughest off-road path even a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck would give out on.

"One more lap, Doctor," Rose said in glee, and the Doctor narrowed his eyes but didn't answer her obvious goading. He _had_ to win, or suffer from teasing in the next months to come. His fast mind already conjured up responses to any teases she might think of, but he called that ship of thought to a stop. She hadn't won yet, anything could happen.

His foot pressed hard on the accelerator, the engine roared and the steering wheel shook in his hands. Every ounce of power he poured into speed, since his car fared better in that regard. The Ferrari-red car Rose drove, which incidentally was a Ferrari, loomed closer and filled the view of his windscreen. The nose of his car gently tapped Rose's backend and she uttered a smothered yelp of anger.

The grin on the Doctor's face was better suited for a road-raging maniac than a time-travelling alien, but it had found the Doctor's lips and felt at home there. He leaned closer as he once again forced his car into Rose's, but this time she didn't make a sound. The grin migrated from the Doctor to Rose as she turned the steering wheel sharply and the Doctor knew he'd made a fatal mistake.

Gone was the Ferrari's lovely carbutt, now the horrified faces of the onlookers cheering them on by the side of the road filled his windscreen as the Doctor ploughed into them. Instinctively he threw up his arms to protect himself, but that didn't stop him from hearing the sickening crunches as the onlookers bounced off his hood and over his car.

The next second the ground ran out and the Doctor felt his stomach drop as his chance to win (and perhaps his life) plummeted off a cliffside, along with his car. The sea below was a messy green-blue, with jagged rocks welcoming the metal. At the last second he thought he saw a glimmer of blue wooden box in the corner of his eyes, but it was gone the moment he looked directly at it.

The car exploded in mid-air.

Rose crowed in victory as she drifted across the finish line and she stuck her hands up in the air. Her crow turned into full-blown laughter as she noticed the Doctor's predicament.

The words 'game over' rolled across the screen, along with a maddening replay of the Doctor's untimely demise. He still had his hands up in his protective position and only now slowly lowered them.

"Am I dead?" he asked hoarsely, and Rose managed to hiccup a "yeah" between laughs. Three boys who stood behind the arcade race machine also laughed their heads off. One of them recovered enough to pat the Doctor on the shoulder.

"I hope you're better at flying your spaceship," he said in a grave voice. Rose snorted as she got out of the plastic chair.

"Hardly."

The Doctor didn't want to pout, but sometimes his facial expressions possessed a mind of their own. He eyed the coin slot of the ancient device. Maybe they could have another go, but a blonde boy took Rose's spot.

"C'mon, Doctor, let's try another ride."

Rose stood by his side and extended her hand to pull him from the chair. His sweaty handprints remained damp on the faux-rubber steering wheel. As he allowed her to pull him up he noticed a gleam in her eyes which promised that she'd remember this longer than he was comfortable with.

"So, anything else you claim to be 'extraordinary good' at?" she asked. The Doctor looked at her sideways. She radiated innocence, but the pull of her mouth corners showed that she preferred to wear one of his huge gleeful grins. His mind jumped in three directions at once to think of a way to get back at her, and something raced past. He threw his mind into reverse and stopped at the idea.

The manic grin returned and Rose looked at him apprehensively. He needed just two words to bring down her victorious attitude.

"Bumper cars. I drive."

He ran off before she responded. Well, four words really, but her response was the same. She ran after him, but unlike in the video game he was faster than her.

"No!" she bellowed melodramatically," you'll kill us both!"


End file.
